Comcast Nightmare Highlights the Importance of Quality Customer Service Training

A professional writer recently recorded his conversation with a Comcast customer service representative that could be described as nothing short of a nightmare.

During the exchange, which the customer says he didn’t start recording until about 10 minutes in, the customer service rep essentially refuses to let him cancel his service.

Finally the customer wins at the end, but only after a battle that sounds more like it could be in a courtroom.

Of course, some have jumped to the defense of the representative, and pointed out it is his job to try and prevent customers from cancelling service, but even so, there’s clearly a level of extremism in how the situation was handled.

The entire situation brings to light a number of issues, but primarily the importance of customer service in any organization, and how customer service can be improved.

The Importance of Customer Service

Think he could use simple customer service training? Learn from the Comcast customer service debacle.

Customer service is absolutely the foundation of any organization, regardless of the size or industry. Without the ability to provide excellent customer service, an organization isn’t going to be able to retain customers, build long-term relationships or manage a positive brand image.

With that being said, despite its importance, many organizations still don’t provide adequate customer service training, and it’s often because they don’t have the necessary resources to fully dedicate to this type of training.

It’s highly possible the Comcast representative was simply doing what he thought was right, based on a lack of overall training, and an incentive program that he believed would reward him for retaining a customer. He may have had the right idea with the call, but with the wrong approach it all went awry, and now Comcast is left apologizing not just to that one customer, but essentially to the world.

In today’s society, where social media reigns supreme, and any call or video has the potential to go viral in a few hours, there’s no opportunity for even the slightest customer service failing, which is why initial training in this area is so important.

Advantages of Customer Service Training

Customer service training isn’t simply about teaching an employee what to say during an artificial situation – it’s about providing employees with a toolbox of resources they can apply to any number of situations.

It’s also about educating employees about the very nature of your organization, your corporate culture, and your overall mission.

The best customer service training isn’t just going to present information—it’s really going to teach skills that allow employees to become problem-solvers. Great training empowers employees to make independent decisions about handling a situation, while doing so in a way that’s in-line with corporate expectations.

The Relationship Between eLearning and Customer Service Training

Despite knowing the importance of customer service as the basis for success in any organization, many companies large and small, still feel they don’t have the resources or time to dedicate to thorough training. These company may do an introductory course on customer service for new hires, but it often ends there.

Customer service training is something that should be personalized to the individual, meaningful, and continual for long-term maintenance and development of skills. For those reasons, eLearning is increasingly becoming the go-to method to provide this training.

eLearning provides opportunities to utilize on-demand training materials, while increasing the efficiency of training, lowering the cost of providing training, and maintaining overall productivity within an organization.

Introduce as many scenarios as possible, whether it’s through text, audio or video. Scenarios are important in customer service training because they give real-world experience, but they also improve retention of knowledge by asking the learner to become engaged and involved in the process.

eLearning provides a great opportunity for immediate feedback, which can be valuable and help CSRs gauge how well they’re handling a certain scenario. You can provide periodic quizzes on information that’s just been presented and the CSR can immediately understand how well they’re grasping the concepts being presented.

Utilize videos to not just show customer service done well, but also customer service that’s poorly provided. eLearning is such a valuable tool for incorporating all different types of multimedia components, and showing videos or even actual recorded audio of situations that have gone badly can help employees really learn the parameters of how situations should be handled.

Provide opportunities for collaboration. Great customer service is all about a strong corporate environment, so by providing opportunities within eLearning to team up with other employees and create unique solutions, employers can foster a sense of unity within an organization. This can be in the form of a chat room where employees share different scenarios and discuss possible problem-solving techniques, or even social media buttons located within the interface.

The recent Comcast debacle is just one of many that corporations around the globe have faced in terms of a customer service failing. With the opportunity to share an interaction with millions of people around the globe, customer service is more important than ever, and it all begins with effective, efficient training.